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The LHC is sometimes referred to as “high energy” physics but it’s only high energy on a subatomic level. (Image credit: mesut zengin via Getty Images) All hadrons are made up of quarks, but LHCb is designed to detect particles that include a particularly rare type of quark known as 'beauty'. Studying CP violation in beauty-containing particles is one of the most promising ways to shed light on the emergence of matter-antimatter asymmetry in the early universe. Hunting exotic particles The climate experiment is called CLOUD, which gives a strong hint of what it's about, although the name stands for Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets. Earth is under constant bombardment by cosmic rays, and it's been theorized that these play a role in cloud formation by seeding tiny water droplets. It isn't an easy process to study in the real atmosphere with real cosmic rays, so CERN is creating its own cosmic rays with the accelerator. These are then fired into an artificial atmosphere, where their effects can be studied much more closely. Making antimatter

Away from ATLAS and CMS, the LHC has two other interaction points. One is occupied by A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE), a specialized detector for heavy-ion physics. The final interaction point is home to two experiments on the very cutting edge of physics: LHCb, devoted to the physics of the exotic 'beauty quark', and MoEDAL — the Monopole and Exotics Detector at the LHC. LHC and the Higgs boson What immediately follows are the weaker (but still compelling) reasons why this possibility is, well, not possible, and in the next section you will see the cast-iron and gold-plated reasons to dismiss this and all other possible Earth-ending scenarios. According to the physics magazine CERN Courier, the LHC has also found around 60 previously unknown hadrons, which are complex particles made up of various combinations of quarks. Even so, all those new particles still lie within the bounds of the Standard Model, which the LHC has struggled to move beyond, much to the disappointment of the numerous scientists who have spent their careers working on alternative theories.

Scientists are still trying to figure out why the universe contains more matter than antimatter. (Image credit: sakkmesterke via Getty Images) With LHC's magnets "trained" and the proton beams more powerful than ever, the LHC will be able to create collisions at higher energies than ever before, expanding the possibilities for what scientists using the upgraded equipment might find. Cosmic rays of that energy are rarer than the lower energy ones, but still 500,000,000 of them hit the Earth's atmosphere every year. Another proposed danger is a thing called a strangelet. A strangelet is a hypothetical subatomic particle composed of roughly an equal number of up, down and strange quarks.

The LHC forward (LHCf) detector, located close to the ATLAS interaction point, uses particles thrown forward in collisions as a means of simulating cosmic rays under laboratory conditions. Further, along the beam trajectory is the Forward Search Experiment (FASER), designed to look for light, weakly interacting particles that are likely to elude the larger detectors. But there is no evidence that strangelets are real, so that might be enough to keep some people from worrying. However, it's still true that the LHC is a machine of discovery and maybe it could actually make a strangelet … well, if they really exist. After all, strangelets haven't been definitively ruled out and some theories favor them. However, an earlier particle accelerator called the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider went looking for them and came up empty.The LHC smashes particles together at high speeds, creating a cascade of new particles, including the infamous Higgs boson. (Image credit: Ket4up via Getty Images) A third experiment optimized for the forward direction is Total Elastic and diffractive cross-section Measurement (TOTEM), located near the CMS interaction point, which focuses on the physics of the high-energy protons themselves. We still don't understand the mass of the Higgs boson. We don't understand the family problem, as in why there are three families of particles,” said CERN Director-General Fabiola Gianotti. “So, studying the Higgs boson with the highest possible precision is a must, and a future collider will do so.” All of those phenomena, as well as many others, cause subatomic particles to be flung across space. Mostly consisting of protons, those particles travel the lengths of the universe, stopping only when an inconvenient bit of matter gets in their way. One of the leading theories beyond the Standard Model is known as supersymmetry. Seemingly abstract at first glance, the basic concept of supersymmetry is actually rather straightforward. Supersymmetry predicts that for each of the 17 fundamental particles in the Standard Model, there exist a hypothetical partner particle -- thus the “symmetry” -- and each of these hypothetical particles would be heavier than their corresponding, already discovered partner -- thus the “super.”

LHC Safety Assessment Group " Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions Addendum on strangelets". June 2008. While physicists know they cannot know the results without building the instruments and doing the experiment, the economics of such exploration is more open to debate. What kind of price are we willing to pay for a better understanding of our universe? One of the key mysteries of the universe is the striking asymmetry between matter and antimatter — why it contains so much more of the former than the latter. According to the Big Bang theory, the universe must have started with equal amounts of both. Yet very early on, probably within the first second, virtually all the antimatter had disappeared, and only the normal matter we see today was left. This asymmetry has been given the technical name 'CP violation', and studying it is one of the main aims of the Large Hadron Collider's LHCb experiment. CERN's research is at an even lower level than this, in the constituents of the protons and neutrons themselves. It's sometimes referred to as "high energy" physics, but the energies are only "high" when viewed on a subatomic scale. Particles inside the LHC, for example, typically only have the energy of a mosquito, according to the LHC Safety Assessment Group's safety report.

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And, occasionally, that inconvenient bit of matter is the Earth. We call these intergalactic bullets — mostly high-energy protons — "cosmic rays." Cosmic rays carry a range of energies, from the almost negligible, to energies that absolutely dwarf those of the LHC. When Run 3 commences we can expect a whole new spate of discoveries, so it's a good time to take a closer look at what makes the LHC — and the rest of CERN — so unique. What is the Large Hadron Collider?

And it is that last worry that could have potentially been so troubling to the LHC's creators. When you don't know what you don't know, you … well … you don't know. Such a question requires a powerful and definitive answer. And here it is… Why the LHC is totally safe Remember that cosmic rays are mostly protons. That's because almost all of the matter in the universe is hydrogen, which consists of a single proton and a single electron. When they hit the Earth's atmosphere, they collide with nitrogen or oxygen or other atoms, which are composed of protons and neutrons. Accordingly, cosmic rays hitting the Earth are just two protons slamming together — this is exactly what is happening inside the LHC. Two protons slamming together. We are in a situation where the Standard Model cannot explain various phenomena,” said Gianotti. “There are many other theories, but we have no clue which one is the right one. And so, making a step forward in terms of energy scale … can help redirect our thoughts.” The bad The ATLAS detector (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) is one of the LHC’s general-purpose detectors. (Image credit: xenotar via Getty Images)

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Over 12 years after it entered service, the LHC is still the world's biggest and most powerful particle accelerator. But it won't hold that record forever. Several countries have plans to go a step further, including China's Circular Electron Positron Collider and the International Linear Collider in Japan. But the Standard Model is not the be-all and end-all of physics. It falls short in providing explanations for mysteries such as the existence of dark matter or dark energy, or why gravity is so different from other fundamental forces. Now one must be careful. It's easy to throw numbers around a bit glibly. While there are lots of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere with LHC energies, the situations between what happens inside the LHC and what happens with cosmic rays everywhere on Earth are a bit different. They are definitely hesitant,” said Cao. “They are hesitant because there are objections from people from all branches of physics. How can they get so much money for this project when there are so many other projects that need funding?”